A perspective of immunotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia: Current advances and challenges

Ying Chen; Jishi Wang; Fengqi Zhang; Ping Liu

doi:10.3389/fphar.2023.1151032

A perspective of immunotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia: Current advances and challenges

Front Pharmacol. 2023 Apr 19:14:1151032. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2023.1151032. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Ying Chen^{1

2}, Jishi Wang^{1

2}, Fengqi Zhang^{1

2}, Ping Liu^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Hematology, Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang, China.
² Guizhou Province Institute of Hematology, Guizhou Province Laboratory of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation Centre, Guiyang, China.

Abstract

During the last decade, the underlying pathogenic mechanisms of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) have been the subject of extensive study which has considerably increased our understanding of the disease. However, both resistance to chemotherapy and disease relapse remain the principal obstacles to successful treatment. Because of acute and chronic undesirable effects frequently associated with conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy, consolidation chemotherapy is not feasible, especially for elderly patients, which has attracted a growing body of research to attempt to tackle this problem. Immunotherapies for acute myeloid leukemia, including immune checkpoint inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies, dendritic cell (DC) vaccines, together with T-cell therapy based on engineered antigen receptor have been developed recently. Our review presents the recent progress in immunotherapy for the treatment of AML and discusses effective therapies that have the most potential and major challenges.

Keywords: DC vaccines; acute myeloid leukemia; car-t; checkpoint inhibitor; immunotherapy.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81960032 and 82170168). Science and Technology Program of Guizhou Province Health Committee (No. gzwkj 2019-2-11 and gzwkj 2021-158). Translational Research Grant of NCRCH (2021WWB01).